I know that there are some fans of this band around here, but I think that it deserves an explicit commentary.

If political terms can exhaust the description of a band, then, art is absent. GYBE: anarchists, leftists? That would be a poor description for a band that stimulates deeper emotions through a performance that could be easily qualified as neoclassical.

Some, some of the Silver Mt. Zion stuff is really good as well.

I enjoy the rage of metal music. But GYBE provokes an intense and unremorseful compassion in me. To see the world with a warm bravery.

Novelty, novelty, more noveltyDopamine surges for novelty. A new car, just-released movie, the latest gadget…we are all hooked on dopamine. As with everything new the thrill fades away as dopamine plummets.

Here’s how the Coolidge effect works: The rat’s reward circuitry is squirting less and less dopamine with respect to the current female, but produces a big dopamine surge for a new female. Does that sound familiar?

Internet porn is especially enticing to the reward circuitry because novelty is always just a click away. It could be a novel “mate,” unusual scene, strange sexual act, or—you fill in the blank. Someone can click for hours and experience more novel sex partners every ten minutes than our hunter-gatherer ancestors experienced in a lifetime.

What’s a brain to do when it has unlimited access to a superstimulating reward it never evolved to handle? The brain adapts, which can lead to addiction.

-The evolutionary theory, a substitute for the traditional theory of emanation

In reality, the evolutionary theory,..., is a substitute for the traditional theory of emanation and consists in denying the periphery-center relationship.(1) Thus the very existence of the Center, source of emanation, and of the radii leading to it is denied, and an attempt is made to situate every hierarchical relationship on the curve marking the periphery.

Instead of proceeding upward, starting from the corporeal level and passing through the animic sphere, then mounting toward realities at first supraformal and finally principial or metacosmic, an evolving hierarchy is imagined, advancing from matter, through vegetable and animal life, to human consciousness, itself considered as some kind of transitory accident.

With a thoughtlessness that is infinitely culpable when they call themselves believers some people imagine a superman who is destined to take man's place, and who consequently would also render Christ's humanity contemptible (2); and a certain "genius" imagines at the end of the evolutionist and progressivist chain something he is not ashamed to call "God" and which is no more than a pseudoabsolute decked out in a pseudotranscendence; for the Eternal will always be Alpha and has always been Omega. Creatures are crystallized in the corporeal zone emanating, in a manner at once, continuous and discontinuous, from the Center and from on high; they do not "evolve" by coming from matter and so from the periphery and from below. But at the same time, and beyond reach of our human point of view, creatures are all "contained" in God and do not really come out from Him; the whole play of relationships between God and the world is but a monologue of relativity. [Logic and Transcendence, p.68-69].

(1) This must not, of course, be confused with the emanationist heresy, which has nothing metaphysical about it and which reduces the Principle to the level of manifestation, or Substance to the level of accidents.

(2) For God only manifests himself directly in a support which by definition marks the presence of the Absolute in relativity and is for this reason "relatively absolute." This "relative absoluteness" is the justification of the possibility Homo Sapiens Man might disappear, if God so wished, but he could not change into another species; the Platonic ideas are precise possibilities and not just misty vagueness: every possibility is what it is and what it ought to be.

-About the evolutionist prejudice

Evolutionism, ..., provides a typical example of reasoning in the absence of sufficient premises. Modern scientism starts from the gratuitous and crude axiom that there is no reality outside sensorial, or virtually sensorial experience with the highly relative exception of psychology, a very limited domain which, in any case, can be reduced philosophically to a subtle mode of the sensorial; and since it starts from this axiom, it will reason in accordance therewith, leaving out of account premises that surpass it.

Now in the case of a reality that does surpass the sensorial and empirical order, any such reasoning must evidently be false - as well might one reason about a sparrow while denying the existence of birds - and it will demonstrate its falsity by replacing the missing premises by purely functional hypotheses; and these hypotheses will betray their chimerical nature by their monstrousness, as witness the concepts of the ape-man or of "hominization". All this is truly sinister if one considers that the essential truth has reference, on the one hand, to the transcendent Absolute and, on the other, to the suprasensible cosmos, or to the extrasensorial character of the greater part of the cosmos, including our souls which, precisely, appertain to this order. [Logic and Transcendence, p.93-94].

Not only Schuon, but also Coomaraswamy, Guenon and Evola opposed the evolutionary theory.

Some members have made a criticism against this theory, or darwinism, in regards Traditionalism, but this has not been properly explained or debated.

I believe in evolution but I'm also an admirer of these thinkers. Traditionalists often embrace Traditionalism as a Religion itself, rather than a philosophy of Religion, which as such, would be prone to criticism as every philosophy is. I think that a flaw of this philosophic school is to battle a scientific theory with metaphysic principles, adding to it, as others have already mentioned, a teleology which is not proper of the evolutionary theory.

Of course, Traditionalism is a wonderful tool to understand the religious phenomena at a metaphysical, ontological and semiotic level, also, it is a wonderful tool to critic modernism, but in order to avoid certain flaws, it must be shaped to respond to a (really) post-modern world.

I'm interested in hearing what others have to say, specially from traditionalists.

• the whole "metal=classical" is a big practical joke, and YOU are the punchline

In order to understand the connection between metal and classical, it's necessary to notice that, certainly, metal is a form of popular music, with a rock background. It's foolish to think that after Wagner there was Metal, no. Nonetheless...

There was popular music dominating the entire scene, right? Yes, goofy themes and boring structures. Some people just got enough of that in a few years (Black Sabbath, Robert Fripp, Jethro Tull) and so they took the rock band and its characteristic syncopation, yes, to bring different themes and structures, which couldn't be linked to anything, not even jazz, as would to classical in melody (a focus on diatonic modal scales, not just pentaphony) and in narrative structure. Not only metal music, but also bands like Kraftwerk and Dead Can Dance, joined into this classical orientation.

From popular music, neoclassical music merges granting it a... higher direction.

Quote

Neoclassical music preserves ancient tradition and accelerates it into modern form, using the values that are eternal to guide us from the past into the future. Neoclassical popular music includes some artists from the following genres: ambient, electronica, synthpop, black/death metal, noise, industrial, EBM and postpunk.

He is famous for many things. For his eerie scream. For his "Satan worship." For biting the head off a dove. And a bat.

But, mostly, Ozzy Osbourne, 61, has become famous for indulging in decades of near-legendary substance abuse — abuse that would vanquish most — and surviving.

Now scientists could find out why.

While the "Godfather of Heavy Metal" may not be heading to St. Louis during his current world tour, his genes are. Sometime next month, DNA extracted from a sample of Osborne's blood will be sent to St. Louis-based Cofactor Genomics, where researchers will sequence Osbourne's genome — or map his genetic blueprint.

Black metal kids sing about immortal war and they don't succeed a booze in their yard. They sing about evilness in their parents basement. Wanna see evil? This is an evil dude and he surely listened to tex-mex and norteño music and none black metal.

But oh, it was about metaphoric, metaphysical evil? Immaturity, metal needs to go forward from that. When you grow up, and you preserve your love for black metal, you start to notice that the very few metal music which is worthy is in the measure it resembles goodness, honor and love, things that you actually can do in real life and that are meritorious.

Sanatha Dharma is a path so broad, all encompassing, that gathers all human possibilities and their possible symbols towards a transcendental and objective reality.

However, in a historical conception, Hinduism can't be understood outside the society it emerged from, in the sense that its recognition needed both an identity, linked to ethnicity, as Indians, as well as a classification of functions inside such system, as castes.

Being the sensible religion that it is, it is natural that many westerner feel attracted to Hinduism. The opinions regarding conversion are diverse, it depends on the particular orientation or sect of Hinduism the adherent wishes to ascribe to, through certain mechanisms and interpretation of rules like varna (duty, task, function, job) as a describer of caste. There are modern forms of Hinduism as the Arya Samaj or the Brahmo Samaj which are reformed forms of Hinduism, which are open to receive foreigners, but whose authority as legit forms of Hinduism is questioned by orthodoxy. So, there are other Hindu teachers that advice to keep with one's original religion (Christianity as the Hinduism of westerns), while studying Hinduism as further knowledge.

I'm not very sure about the full validity of the next, but it is a great reading if you are interested in officially converting to Hinduism:

Serious music, for comparative purposes, may be thus characterized: Every detail derives its musical sense from the concrete totality of the piece which, in turn, consists of the life relationship of the details and never of a mere enforcement of a musical scheme. For example, in the introduction of the first movement of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony the second theme (in C-major) gets its true meaning only from the context. Only through the whole does it acquire its particular lyrical and expressive quality — that is, a whole built up of its very contrast with the cantus firmus-like character of the first theme. Taken in isolation the second theme would be disrobed to insignificance. Another example may be found in the beginning of the recapitulation over the pedal point of the first movement of Beethoven's "Appassionata". By following the preceding outburst it achieves the utmost dramatic momentum. By omitting the exposition and development and starting with this repetition, all is lost.

Nothing corresponding to this can happen in popular music. It would not affect the musical sense if any detail were taken out of the context; the listener can supply the "framework" automatically, since it is a mere musical automatism itself. The beginning of the chorus is replaceable by the beginning of innumerable other choruses. The interrelationship among the elements or the relationship of the elements to the whole would be unaffected. In Beethoven, position is important only in a living relation between a concrete totality and its concrete parts. In popular music, position is absolute. Every detail is substitutable; it serves its function only as a cog in a machine.

[...]

Glamor. A further requirement of plugging is a certain richness and roundness of sound. This requirement evolves that feature in the whole plugging mechanism which is most overtly bound up with advertising as a business as well as with the commercialization of entertainment. It is also particularly representative of the inter-relationship of standardization and pseudo-individualization

It is musical glamor: those innumerable passages in song arrangements which appear to communicate the "now we present" attitude. The musical flourishes which accompany MGM's roaring lion whenever he opens his majestic mouth are analogous to the non-leonine sounds of musical glamor heard over the air

Art is Weltanschauung. Where classical music is about the whole and the eternal, pop music is uncaring about the universe and so it focuses its sparks unto the stimulus of the moment, anal or phallic, conveying fragmentation and atemporality,

A new generation has come of age, shaped by an unprecedented revolution in technology and dramatic events both at home and abroad. They are Generation Next, the cohort of young adults who have grown up with personal computers, cell phones and the internet and are now taking their place in a world where the only constant is rapid change. Generation Next is made up of 18-25 year-olds (born between 1981 and 1988).

-They use technology and the internet to connect with people in new and distinctive ways. Text messaging, instant messaging and email keep them in constant contact with friends. About half say they sent or received a text message over the phone in the past day, approximately double the proportion of those ages 26-40.

-They are the "Look at Me" generation. Social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace and MyYearbook allow individuals to post a personal profile complete with photos and descriptions of interests and hobbies. A majority of Gen Nexters have used one of these social networking sites, and more than four-in-ten have created a personal profile.

-Their embrace of new technology has made them uniquely aware of its advantages and disadvantages. They are more likely than older adults to say these cyber-tools make it easier for them to make new friends and help them to stay close to old friends and family. But more than eight-in-ten also acknowledge that these tools "make people lazier."

-About half of Gen Nexters say the growing number of immigrants to the U.S. strengthens the country more than any generation. And they also lead the way in their support for gay marriage and acceptance of interracial dating.

-Beyond these social issues, their views defy easy categorization. For example, Generation Next is less critical of government regulation of business but also less critical of business itself. And they are the most likely of any generation to support privatization of the Social Security system.

-They maintain close contact with parents and family. Roughly eight-in-ten say they talked to their parents in the past day. Nearly three-in-four see their parents at least once a week, and half say they see their parents daily. One reason: money. About three-quarters of Gen Nexters say their parents have helped them financially in the past year.

-Their parents may not always be pleased by what they see on those visits home: About half of Gen Nexters say they have either gotten a tattoo, dyed their hair an untraditional color, or had a body piercing in a place other than their ear lobe. The most popular are tattoos, which decorate the bodies of more than a third of these young adults.

-One-in-five members of Generation Next say they have no religious affiliation or are atheist or agnostic, nearly double the proportion of young people who said that in the late 1980s. And just 4% of Gen Nexters say people in their generation view becoming more spiritual as their most important goal in life.

-They are somewhat more interested in keeping up with politics and national affairs than were young people a generation ago. Still, only a third say they follow what's going on in government and public affairs "most of the time."

-In Pew surveys in 2006, nearly half of young people (48%) identified more with the Democratic Party, while just 35% affiliated more with the GOP. This makes Generation Next the least Republican generation.

-Voter turnout among young people increased significantly between 2000 and 2004, interrupting a decades-long decline in turnout among the young. Nonetheless, most members of Generation Next feel removed from the political process. Only about four-in-ten agree with the statement: "It's my duty as a citizen to always vote."

-They are significantly less cynical about government and political leaders than are other Americans or the previous generation of young people. A majority of Americans agree with the statement: "When something is run by the government, it is usually inefficient and wasteful," but most Generation Nexters reject this idea.

-Their heroes are close and familiar. When asked to name someone they admire, they are twice as likely as older Americans to name a family member, teacher, or mentor. Moreover, roughly twice as many young people say they most admire an entertainer rather than a political leader.

-They are more comfortable with globalization and new ways of doing work. They are the most likely of any age group to say that automation, the outsourcing of jobs, and the growing number of immigrants have helped and not hurt American workers.

-Asked about the life goals of those in their age group, most Gen Nexters say their generation's top goals are fortune and fame. Roughly eight-in-ten say people in their generation think getting rich is either the most important, or second most important, goal in their lives. About half say that becoming famous also is valued highly by fellow Gen Nexters.

Generation [cyber] meek, really. More liberal, more centralist, more interested in richness and fame, much more capable of transmitting banalities, but not very far from generation X. I've noticed that a lot of people think that we're heading somewhere better (and very fast) with Internet, but essentially, things are not gonna change just for having this technology...

Jesu, joy of man's desiring,Holy wisdom, love most bright;Drawn by Thee, our souls aspiringSoar to uncreated light.Word of God, our flesh that fashioned,With the fire of life impassioned,Striving still to truth unknown,Soaring, dying round Thy throne.

-J.S. Bach

Both are beautiful, but, quite contradictory to come from a single Truth, don't you think?

I've heard anti-theistic ska, trova, hardcore, rock n' roll, and you already know it, they suck. But, for a believer of Truth, why should one consider anti-theistic metal valuable? Because it is reverent.

Arnold Toynbee said that, every man must face the great cosmic question, whether for one's choice, or by being finally driven by suffering to it. In my opinion I think that both are the same point. Metal lyricists show a honest inquiring for this cosmic answer, in which a lot of them found no answer in Christianity; metal lyricists denounce Christianity, specifically the Christianity they see in their peers, to be unsuccessful explaining the horror around them. But, they don't renounce to reverence and romanticism for humanism. They keep a mystic impulse which allows the mystery of that uncontrollable forces of nature inside human and outside human, to be expressed in art.

This perfectly conforms a single Truth with an Apollonian and a Dionysian face. So are the masks and the names of a single God. Truth in opposition to irreverence, individualism, egotism.